Myanmar. Or for you older folks.. Burma. This place is way beyond what I could have ever expected. Let me start with the journey on getting here first. We had about a 5 hour bus ride to get to the border where we then put our big packs on and carried all of our things for about 2 miles across the border, through immigration, to our next bus stop. Once we finally found our bus we got on and then had a 10 hour bus ride which included lots of immigration stops and funny officers who got on our bus and some who even took selfies with us. We arrived on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere around 4:30am where we then got all of our stuff on again and walked for a while until we arrived at our new home for the month.
Our “home” is simple and is far different from anything we have experienced yet. My team stays in a small room on the floor with our sleeping pads, and another team from our squad is across the hall with the same living conditions. We have the luxury of squatty potties, if you’ve never experienced one of those before it is kind of self explanatory. Our shower is a cement room where we use buckets to dump on ourselves to get somewhat cleaned up. We’ve been here for a week and I’ve only taken one… it included a tarantula and a frog hiding in the corner that I didn’t notice until getting out. There are no stores near us, but one of our ministry hosts takes a group to the market once a week where we get food to cook for each meal. So far it looks like toast and eggs for breakfast and ramen or rice for lunch and dinner cooked in our kitchen with our single burner and one pot.
Ministry throughout the week looks a little like preaching and sharing testimonies on Sundays for the morning and evening services, Monday-Friday is teaching english at the bible college, and Saturdays are teaching the orphans. Each day we have about 4 hours where we are teaching grammar, pronunciation, and vocab. We do a lot of practice conversations with the students to work on their english and we get to share with them more about Jesus each day during morning and evening devos. They are all learning and growing to become missionaries, just like me (: They are extremely hard workers and make going to school everyday again such a joy.
As you can see life is not “normal” here. You can’t just run to the store if you need something, you’re never actually clean, sleep is not promised, there are rats and lizards in your room sometimes, but that is truly the cost of being a disciple. Being a follower of Jesus was never supposed to be easy because if it was, wouldn’t everyone do it? I am thankful that it’s not easy though, because I get to see so much more of his goodness through all the things I am forced to give up. He sacrificed his life for us so it shouldn’t be hard for us to give up some little comforts in order to love on more of his children and share with more of his people about him.
Side Note: This month I have decided to not leave our little village and to just find more of his presence and goodness here. So other than posting blogs (because it’s actually required) I am not using Wi-Fi, and I am not going anywhere that isn’t within walking distance, other than to the market down the street for groceries.
I am so excited to see how he is going to move through this challenging but growing month, and I am so thankful he gave me this opportunity to humble myself and live a little bit like how he did when he was on earth.
